August 8, 2017

According to the Daily Caller, there were some other folks who didn’t seem terribly interested in airing that sort of dirty laundry when it first came to light. They included reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post. Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that some of our stalwart defenders of the Freedom of the Press in the Fourth Estate may have been interested in getting that story off the front pages as quickly as possible.

A series of emails from reporters at The Washington Post and The New York Times published Friday reveal they weren’t eager to cover the 2016 tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and then Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The American Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit organization, released a series of emails that show the reporters at the outlets didn’t seem to want to cover the secret meeting between the former president and Lynch, as the Department of Justice was investigating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server.

Matt Zapotosky, a WaPo reporter, reached out to a Department of Justice spokesperson in the hopes of “putting the story to rest.”

Framing your request for details as an effort to “put the story to rest” doesn’t exactly speak to a dogged reporter digging for the truth. But Zapotosky wasn’t the only one to turn up in this investigation. Mark Landler, White House correspondent for the New York Times, described his assignment to cover the story as him being, “pressed into service.” Again, given the players involved and the timing, one might think that a dutiful reporter would be excited at the prospect of chasing down such a juicy lead. But apparently not.